130616 The Goodness, Compassion, Forgiveness, and Immutability of God

The Goodness, Compassion, Forgiveness, and Immutability of God – This morning we focus on first of all the goodness of God. A good passage of scripture to get us focus on this big picture is from Exodus 34:6-7, where our attention is pointed to the Lord. We spend an entire week in talking about what we can learn about some of the names of God.  We see one of those names we talked about right at the beginning of Exodus 34:6. He is Jehovah, He is Yahweh, He is the one who has always been, He is the one who is, He is the one who always will be, He is “a God merciful and  gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin..” So much of what we want to talk about this morning is capsulated right there in verses 6 and 7, He is a God who is good, He is a God of compassion, He is a God of forgiveness, and He is a God who does not change. First of all, the idea of the goodness of God. The Psalmist in Psalm 33:5 is moved to exclaim, “He loves righteousness (this God we are talking about this morning), “He loves righteousness and justice; the earth is full of the goodness of the Lord”. Everywhere we look we see His goodness…